Alexinthymia
by seashell77
Summary: Alex is going through some hard times, read on to find out more :)
1. Chapter 1

**Hey everyone, we're onto another story now. I don't want to give away too much, I just want you to read it :) Basically Alex is going through some hard times, so possible trigger warnings. I've rated it M because of the darker issues it deals with, don't worry there will be no swearing and no scenes of an explicit nature Enjoy :) **

**I do not own Modern Family or any of the characters affiliated with it. **

Chapter 1

Alexinthymia: An inability to describe emotions in a verbal manner.

Alex swung her feet as she sat at the island counter, half listening to the conversation of her family, the other part of her mind caught up in the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions which were always clambering for attention. Hayley's laugh cut through the tangle of her thoughts, and she brought her attention back to the discussion for a second only to zone out yet again once she heard her telling their mum something about a dress she saw the other day. Her family had long ago come to terms with the fact that Alex didn't interact with them much albeit to make a small sarcastic comment every now and again, so they didn't think anything of it when Alex was sitting quietly while they joked and generally got along for a brief period of time.

She was thankful to be left to her own devices, being the only introvert in a family full of extroverts could be exhausting and there were times when she just wanted to escape the hustle and bustle of life in general. She wasn't exactly sure when life got so exhausting, but she was finding it harder and harder to get out of bed in the mornings, harder and harder to leave the sanctuary of her room. Alex sighed into her pancakes, and her mum looked up for a second, worry creasing her forehead. Their eyes met for a few seconds, Alex looking hopefully at her mum before Claire went back to scolding Luke for something he had done. Tears fought their way up, but Alex pushed them back angrily, she couldn't cry, she was always the strong one; it didn't matter that she felt weak, but she was the sane one in the family; if she fell apart the home would become a madhouse. Still, she would've loved her mum to ask if she was okay, to hold her, to something...

Even though it was her fault, she had pushed all of them away, made them feel unsafe to approach her or check on her, she still wished one of them would refuse to acknowledge her barriers, to stumble clumsily through them the way they stumbled through all aspects of life and just...well anything really. Yes she was cynical, yes she was smart, but sometimes she longed for human contact too. She had very little to discuss with her family, but her sarcastic comments, while taken as offence was actually her contribution to their conversations. She didn't mean to deride them, family was family, and there were times when she was truly appreciative of them, it was just...with a vocabulary like hers, Alex was amazed at her inability to put words to her feelings, but there was an ache, a longing for...something, anything. There just _had_ to be more to life.

The outsider of the family, that was her role, she was the only one who wasn't funny or childish at times. She was the sane one, that's what she kept telling herself, but day by day she began to doubt that more; spending too much time inside your own head is a dangerous thing and the more she probed into the dark recesses, the more frightened she became. To express that fear to her family though, to express her feeling of loneliness, of yearning, of complete hopelessness, how could one even begin, there were simply no words in the English language to truly do justice to her feelings; simply no way of telling her parents without them freaking out and accusing her of saying it was their fault. Her parents weren't exactly the most stable, but Alex imagined that it was something that would make most parents would freak out. It's a hard thing to swallow when you know your child is broken and even worse when you don't have the power to fix them. How could she possibly deal with knowing that every time her parents were looking at her, they were accusing her for breaking up their perfect life, for having problems and not being the perfect child they were able to trot out to brag about? She wasn't sure if it would make things better or worse, all she knew was this state of mind was becoming unbearable; there was a scream inside her that just had to be let out otherwise it would reverberate inside the chasms of her mind forevermore, slowly knocking loose her sanity.

Alex pushed the pancakes idly around her plate with her fork, her stomach undulating too much to eat. She watched Luke as he enthusiastically discussed at length a stick he found the other day, why couldn't she be like that? Why couldn't she be struck by the smallest things? Alex had stopped sharing her successes with the family; they mostly related to her school work, and it was frustrating to see the blank looks on her parents face as they wondered if this was an achievement she was telling them about. She longed to tell them about the test she aced, she longed to share her frustration on being beat by Sanjay again, by one mark, and she longed just to discuss her day, how her teacher seemed to roll her eyes when Alex's hand shot into the air once again, how she had been called a nerd, yet again. There was just so much to say, so much that had been bottled up for so long. Yet there was a fear to release it, a fear that once unstoppered, the flood of emotions would never cease, perhaps it was better to keep adding everything to the bottle, to not feel, to not talk about it. Perhaps...

**So this one was a little different from the last one, I'd love to hear what you thought :) Please leave a review down below. I'll see you all next Friday :) **


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey everyone out there in fanfiction world, Happy Easter! I hope you're having a lovely day with your family and friends and not getting too bloated from all the hot cross buns and chocolate :) So thank you every one for the reviews of the first chapter, I'm glad this story was received well, I was a bit worried because of the darker subject matter Thank you momadance420, gypsy rosalie, Guest, skye, Guest, and Anna for reviewing :) Now without further ado, on with the story. **

Chapter 2

Sanjay took over the dissection of the heart as Alex watched on with disinterest. He was talking, no doubt bragging about how many of his father's heart surgeries he had seen or how if he wanted he could fix the heart problem that killed the pig. If Alex had the energy she would've pointed out that a steel bolt to the head and then a blade to the throat was most likely what killed this pig. She didn't have the energy for Sanjay's self preoccupation though, so she sat quietly, letting his words wash over her, choosing instead to neatly copy the diagram on the board.

'Alex? Are you not listening to me?' Sanjay nudged her arm.

'Sorry, what were you saying?' Alex looked up from her notes.

'I was telling you about an amazing surgery I witnessed my father perform, it was meant to be a keyhole surgery, but there was a complication and he had to open the guy's chest up. My father was holding a guy's heart in his hands!' Sanjay enthused.

'Wow that is pretty amazing,' Alex tried to sound sincere, but she just couldn't manage it.

'There's no need to be jealous,' Sanjay smirked. 'I'm sure your dad changes lives in retail, and well your mum...' Alex fixed him with a stern look and he went back to cutting up the heart, talking her through the steps as if she were his intern. Why couldn't people simply leave her alone? She felt like she didn't have the energy to keep up with all the talking and the having to react to what people said when they were talking. Lately she had just been feeling so drained, so tired; tired of people, tired of her boring life, just tired.

There was no polite way to tell Sanjay that she could do without hearing his arrogantly nasal voice for ten minutes, there was no way to tell him that she could do anything he could do and that he should stop thinking he was so much better than her. She felt like society's need for etiquette and politeness were holding her back from expressing her feelings and being heard. There was no way for her to get what she needed. But then again if there were, what did she need? She wasn't sure if she could answer that question, there was an emptiness within her, and she just needed...something, something to help her cope with the world again, something to help her feel alive, to stop her from wandering around on autopilot. How could she achieve it when she had absolutely no idea what that something was?

Alex felt like there was a mental gag, she could think coherently and sort out how she felt about things, but any time she tried to express how she felt, it all became jumbled and the words came out all wrong. Someone always got offended when she tried to explain, and so she'd just given up. Instead of listening and caring enough to hear what she was trying to say, someone always had to take things personally and make it all about them. And yes, sometimes what she said was offensive perhaps, but she had to listen to backhanded compliments all day long, so why didn't she ever get a turn? Instead they called her boring, uncommunicative, anti-social when the fact was she was simply just observing, and not wanting to drag down the conversation by saying the wrong thing. Oftentimes she was frustrated in conversation, many of her remarks or jokes would be met by blank looks, and she found that when she spoke she alienated people. They tried to cover their lack of comprehension by telling her she was the weird one, the nerdy one. The fact was she was intelligent, well read and funny in a clever way, but she was yet to find people to understand her, people with whom she could have an engaging intellectual conversation.

_ I just feel so alone, I feel like some blundering fool who isn't part of the human race, and I'm yet to meet someone like me, someone with whom I can share my thoughts and not have them greeted with strange looks. I just need to feel like I'm not alone, that I'm not crazy, that other people go through this!_

**Stay tuned next Friday for the next installment, Happy Easter, Happy Holidays and I wish you good mental health. As always reviews are always welcomed :) **


	3. Chapter 3

**Happy Friday everyone, and Happy Anzac Day to all of my Aussie readers :) I would like to thank gypsy rosalie and skye for their dedicated readership so far and their reviews :) **

Chapter 3

'I'm scared that there's something wrong with me, I'm scared that I'm crazy,' Alex whispered. This was the first time she had been able to voice her greatest fear aloud. She examined herself in the mirror, looking into her own eyes as if trying to see through them into her mind. Her mind, it was the thing she was most proud of, the thing which made her who she was, and it was the thing which was letting her down, the thing which held the capacity to destroy her.

'I'm not crazy, am I?' Alex's voice sounded feeble in the quiet of the empty house. The truth was she was unsure; she longed to be able to read other people's minds, not to learn all their secrets, but to see if she was the only one who thought this way. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she found herself thinking that this was not the way normal people thought. _But what constitutes normal? Aren't we all a little crazy?_ She yearned to believe that, but there was a small part of her brain, a part completely disconnected from her intelligence which undermined her stand. It was that part of the brain which told her that everyone else in her family was happy, that everyone else around her was just fine, and that was why she was considered strange.

Tears welled in Alex's eyes as she looked at herself and she turned away from her reflection, crawling into bed and letting the hot tears roll silently down her cheek. Crying was something she did a lot more now too, every so often an excess of emotions would build up and pour out unexpectedly. She would find herself getting worked up over ads on the TV; she would be overcome by a feeling of such despair while reading a textbook that she would have to take a break, unable to read at all through the tears which inundated her eyes. It was nice though, in a weird way, to feel something, so much of her time was spent feeling numb, or shut off from the world that it was nice to have a recognisable human emotion. Still even with the small pressure releases, there were so many emotions inside of her, so much chaos and confusion. How was she meant to even begin to express them when she couldn't even find the strength to begin sifting through them? It wasn't as if she liked being this way, she would give anything to feel more human, it was just...she was exhausted from just breathing, and being conscious, there was barely anything left over for anything else. There had to be another way, surely everyone wasn't walking around feeling this way?

Alex felt as though she was a ticking time bomb, constantly mere seconds away from a complete emotional meltdown. One day the timer would go off and she would become one of those people who crowds parted around, who people would get off the bus five stops early just so they didn't have to see the craziness. Should she just cut her losses and check herself into an institution? Should she start seeing a psychiatrist? Should she simply trade her brain in for a new one?

In her frustration Alex kicked a pile of her SAT textbooks off the end of her bed, feeling satisfaction in lashing out at something. She longed to have one of the cliché teenage 'trash a room' montage moments, but that would be too teenage angsty, and Alex detested clichés. Besides, while it might make her feel better for a moment or two, the cleaning up wouldn't help lift her spirits. She angrily wiped the tears from her face, she was constantly simultaneously torn between being angry at the expression of emotions and needing desperately just to spend a whole day screaming until she lost her voice and crying until there were no more tears and she was left, a shaking bundle curled up on the floor. Perhaps she needed to lose her mind, to go so crazy that she got it out of her system and was able to leave it behind and move on with her life. Alex was always so steadfast, so certain, but now she didn't feel as though she were sure about anything anymore. Her life had become a tangle of threads and she wasn't holding any of the ends.

***sigh poor Alex, I'm afraid it will only get worse before it gets better. Please leave me a review, let me know if this is straying into the angsty domain instead of just emotional. Anyway until next Friday please leave reviews, I'm off to see the latest MF episode set in my own country :) :) **


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey Everyone, Welcome to another chapter :) Thanks everyone for the reviews. One comment which was made by a few people was regarding the length of the chapters, I made a creative choice to keep the chapters fairly short because of the dark subject matter, and therefore the ones where it's talking about Alex's feelings of depression will be shorter :) **

**Thanks to gypsy rosalie, Guest, momadance420, TheSourFish, dc, and skye for the reviews :)**

Chapter 4

'Hey honey,' Claire popped her head around the door. Alex looked up from the book she had been reading on the bed. 'How is your homework going?'

'I'm just writing an essay on Einstein and how his discoveries have informed modern science.' Alex looked at her mum over her glasses, enjoying the struggle of her mum's facial features to try and not show her confusion.

'Oh that sounds fun,' Her mum finally said vaguely.

'Why are you really here mum?' Alex put a bookmark in her book and looked at her mum. _It's not as if you came to talk science with me, you barely understand the basic principles. _

'I just wanted to make sure you were going okay with school, you know, the SAT's are a big thing.' Claire said cautiously. _Don't you mean you want to make sure I'm going to top the school so you can brag about me, that's all I'm good for after all, _Alex rolled her eyes.

'I'm fine.' Alex said shortly. _You've never cared enough to ask about me so why should you care now? _As much as she wanted to believe otherwise she knew this was a ruse so that her mum could convince herself that she was still a good parent, that she wasn't neglecting one of her children.

'O-okay,' a funny expression crossed Claire's face. 'Well grandpa just called and we're all thinking of heading to the beach this weekend, would you like to join us this time?' _This time? Was her mother seriously trying to make her feel guilty for not going on the last family trip because she had a huge exam to study for?! Alex's face contorted before she got it under control and wrestled it back into her everyday emotionless mask. _

'I don't know, you'll just yell at me for trying to study or read when it's not like I have anything to talk to anyone about anyway,' Alex shrugged.

'Okay, well if you'd prefer to stay home, that's fine too, just let me know if you change your mind.' Alex nodded and turned back to her book. Her mum stood and hesitated for a moment, looking as though she wanted to say something else. After a moment she just shook her head and left the room, leaving Alex feeling even sadder than before; a part of her had wanted her mum to say something. She was constantly torn between wanting contact with her family and wanting them to just leave her alone. _What is wrong with me? How did I get to be so broken? _The thing that annoyed her most about her family was that they just went on with life as if everything was normal. How could the world keep spinning? How could people just go on with their business when she felt this way?! At times it was comforting, she felt that if everyone else could just go on with their life that maybe her problem wasn't so big in the scale of things, it helped her feel like her mask of normalcy was working, that she was fooling people. Most of the time, however it just angered her, what had those people done to deserve to _be_ normal, while she was doomed forever to need to pretend. There were simply no words to express this frustration, this anger, when she thought of putting it into words, all that came to mind was a guttural, animalistic scream of anguish. While that would certainly release some of the emotions, it did nothing to communicate her feelings to others, to make them see why she was so sullen all the time, why she felt dead inside.

Most of all, she was scared. Her mind, the one thing which had set her apart all these years, the one thing she had thought she could always count on, was failing her. She was held a prisoner at the ransom of her sanity and time was running out. There was no one at the other end to pay off her captor; her parents didn't seem to notice what she was going through, they just left her alone, left her drowning in the quicksand of negativity, her head was about to go under and they were just going on like nothing had happened, oblivious to her screams. Her parents, the two people she had considered to be her heroes, to be there for her always. How could they just ignore her suffering? How could they not love her enough to help? Were they really that blind? Really that self involved? Did they love Luke and Hayley more? Well that was a no brainer; Alex had always felt like the black sheep of the family. Hayley and Luke had always needed more attention, more supervision to stop them from doing something stupid. Alex had sort of slipped through the cracks, as the self sufficient child she had been left to her own devices, put in a corner to read while her parents chased Luke around to try and wrestle him into pants, or cleaned the bathroom after Hayley had tried to experiment with their mother's makeup. She had been left alone, loved only when her parents remembered she was there, or remembered that they had yet again left her out. Tears welled in Alex's eyes as she remembered her childhood. Least loved, most forgotten, that was the theme of her life.

**Hope you all enjoyed it, please review and I'll see you all next week :) **


	5. Chapter 5

**Hey Everyone TGIF right?! Thank you to momadance420, gypsy rosalie, skye, TheSourFish, Kate, and Guest for their reviews :) **

Chapter 5

'Come on Alex, let's go!' Claire yelled from the lounge room. Alex sighed, looking down the stairs from the top landing. All it would take is one little slip and she wouldn't have to go; the thought that she might just as easily break her neck instead of an arm or a leg didn't faze her in the least. She found herself caring less and less about everything every day.

'Hey, what are you doing?' Hayley appeared behind her on the stairs, frowning as she looked at her sister.

'Oh nothing,' Alex muttered, clumping down the stairs, letting her bag bump on every single step.

'Stop dragging your feet, we're going,' Claire scolded.

'Do I really have to go?' Alex sighed. 'I have an essay to write.'

'You need to stop taking your education so seriously, have a little bit of fun for once!' Claire groaned, saying words which no parent of a teenager would ever imagine themselves saying.

'Sorry for being the one person in this family with ambition,' Alex muttered.

'Fine, since you're going to be so gloomy, you can stay home, Uncle Mitchell isn't coming either so I'll send him over to watch you.'

'I'm not a child, I don't need a babysitter.'

'It's either that or you go with us,'

'Fine.' Of all the people in the family, Uncle Mitchell was the most bearable. He'd be happy to leave her to her own devices.

'Alright, bye then,' with a quick wave the family had all piled out of the house and were gone.

'Bye.' Alex muttered to herself. It wouldn't take Uncle Mitchell long to get here, so much for having a day to herself. Alex flopped onto the couch, placing a book nearby so she could pretend to be reading when her uncle showed up. Until then she stared up at the ceiling, finding bliss in the unadulterated silence. The nagging and attention seeking behaviour of her thoughts were chaos enough without the added clamour with which her family filled the environment of their house. It was exhausting to keep all the thoughts at bay, to try and ignore them instead of letting the overwhelm her. If there was one thing she did not want, it was to become that person who suddenly shouted "Shut up" in the middle of the street; she did not want to become that person who let her sanity escape her entirely. She was strong, that could never happen to a strong person, could it? And for that matter now she thought of it, she wasn't so sure she was strong, she definitely fell more on the side of vulnerable. Things like this didn't happen to strong people, things like mental illness. She had never let those words enter her mind, mental illness, but she could no longer lie to herself; she wasn't the same person, she was sick. What should she do now?

'Alex? Your mum said you were staying home too,' Alex quickly grabbed the book, right way up of course, this wasn't some silly cliché.

'Hey Uncle Mitchell, I'm just in the lounge room,' she called back. 'It's nice not to have to shut myself in my room to get peace and quiet.'

'I feel your pain, with Cam in the house there is no such place for me,' Mitchell rolled his eyes as he sat down on the other couch.

'I can imagine,' Alex sympathised wryly, a small smirk on her face. 'Is that why you stayed home?'

'Well that and being a redhead my skin just loves the sun.' Uncle Mitchell's voice returned to its normal state: sarcasm.

'Right.'

'But I'm glad we get to spend the day together, you're the one person in the family most like me, and we really don't get the chance to hang out much.'

'Yeah, well I'm always studying,' Alex admitted.

'And I'm always working; we're such nerds.' Alex chuckled at this, somehow Uncle Mitchell saying it took the sting out of the words, like they were taking back the word and saying "Well is it really such a bad thing after all?" There was something empowering about the word when it wasn't said with harsh meaning, the tone implying it as a compliment rather than an insult. She was smiling, but all too soon her facial muscles froze and she found herself struggling as the negative thoughts crept back in. Perhaps the reason she and Uncle Mitchell never caught up was because he really didn't like her after all, perhaps he had groaned when her mum spoke to him on the phone about watching her, perhaps he didn't want to be here as much as she didn't want him here.

'What's going on, Alex?' His voice startled her out of her paranoid thoughts. She looked up to see him frowning at her, studying her face closely.

'Nothing, just tired from all the studying,' Alex deflected.

'I'm family; you can speak to me about anything,'

'No, I really can't,' Alex remembered all the horrible things she had thought about her family. They were things she shouldn't be thinking, and she wasn't even sure why they had crossed her mind in the first place. Was she really such a horrible person?

'You know, in high school, before I came out I went through this time where I was angry at everyone, and sad, and I couldn't be bothered to get out of bed most mornings,' Mitchell said.

'I'm not a lesbian if that's what you mean?' She frowned, more because her uncle was so far out of the ballpark than because she was truly offended by the fact he had thought she was gay.

'No, what I'm trying to say is, I've felt exactly what you're feeling and I know it's hard to talk about it to normal people, but to be able to talk about it to someone who has been there is such a relief.' A silence hung in the air while Alex processed this, how exactly did he know what she was going through? 'You can talk to me, Alex, there is nothing you can say which will even slightly shock me, trust me I've thought much worse!' The air was heavy with Mitchell's anticipation, and buzzing with Alex's unsaid thoughts as she struggled to find the words.

'I feel as if I don't know myself anymore, my thoughts, my personality, they're not me, they're this monster which has taken over my mind.' The words tumbled over each other as they fell out of her mouth. 'I just find myself hating everything, but then at other times I'm so indifferent to everything, either way there is no joy.'

'Go on,' Uncle Mitchell nodded. Alex looked down at her hands, picking at her nails as she spoke.

'I feel like there's a great sadness inside me, like I am the sadness so intertwined is it with my being. Any time I smile or laugh, it's not because I'm particularly enjoying a situation, it's the mask I've constructed; I've learnt by heart all of the appropriate responses and I'm playing them out like some sick pantomime.' Alex looked up at Mitchell, eyes brimming with pain. 'It makes me wonder if I'll ever be happy again. I don't even know what it is that is making me so desperately unhappy in the first place so how can I even begin to heal?'

'You've got to at least try, sometimes it's along the way that you find the answer to all of these questions, and trust me there are so many questions!'

'Why do I feel like this? I haven't been through any huge trauma's, I haven't experienced anything important enough to feel so much pain and so much numbness. Why am I so sad, when I'm better off than so many other people?'

'That's the thing about mental illness, there's no rhyme or reason, just a cruel, unrelenting disease.' Mitchell sighed.

'It's just so hard going through this when everyone else gets to be normal. And I can't tell any of them about it because they're so normal; they can nod and make sympathetic noises, but they'll never understand in the least. They'll never understand the barren wasteland you're dumped into when your mind deserts you without so much as a compass or map, or even water. You're all alone, with only negative thoughts to keep you company.'

'Maybe they'll never understand, but to make both your and their lives easier you need to try and explain, we need to break the taboo surrounding mental illness and help other people to learn your moods so that they can know when it's okay to comfort you and when it's best to leave you alone.'

'But the truth is I don't even know why I'm sad,' Alex sighed. 'How can I explain when they'll want to know why? I can't lock down a specific cause, all I know is that for a long time I've been feeling sad, and that recently it's been joined by a feeling of hopelessness. I feel as if the world is going to end tomorrow and no one can see it but me.'

'I guess for you the world has ended, at least your world has,'

'I just feel as if there's something missing, something that everyone else has but for some reason I don't and it's that missing piece which is making me so miserable.' Alex sighed.

'Have you tried to talk to your parents about this?'

'No, they'd never understand,' Alex looked down at her hands. 'You know mum, she'd just freak out and take it personally, and Dad, he'd just care too much. I don't know why anyone _would_ care though, who am I in the grand scheme of things? What does it matter how I feel or even if I die tomorrow? There will be no page in a history book dedicated to me, I will have lived and died without leaving a trace, as not so much as a blip on the radar of the earth.

'It would matter to us, we're your family, and you are much, much more than a blip on a radar to us. You're a brilliant girl, and while you may not have accomplished much of worth yet, I am certain you will, you can't put the future scientific advancements you might make in jeopardy just because you're struggling.' Mitchell was staring intensely at her, willing her to see his point. 'Everyone goes through something at one point or another, but they don't let it dictate who they are. Yes this is hard right now, yes recovery is going to be a long process and yes it will be painful to think about for many years to come, yes it's suffocating how sad you feel right now, but it all changes, you just have to be so desperate for life that you pull yourself up out of this dark pit and you crawl every single inch of the way until you've left the darkness way behind.' Alex gulped as she looked at her uncle's quivering lip, the fire in his eyes. It hadn't been easy for him to recover, and it had probably been even harder for him to talk to her about it.

'Okay,' Alex picked up her book, exhausted by the conversation and needing to consider all that had been said.

**so yay some more dialgoue, some more action, it is a fic about depression so at times it will just be a lot of Alex's thoughts, sorry but depression isn't exactly an exciting action packed thing. Alright well as always reviews make me very happy, I like to hear any thoughts on the fic :) **

**Until next Friday, happy thoughts and lots of reviews :) **


	6. Chapter 6

**Another Friday, another installment :) I hope your week has been good so far, and I hope you're as excited as I am to see what happens next. First quick thankyous to gypsy rosalie and squirmyphish/momadance420 for the reviews, I always appreciate feedback :) **

Chapter 6

_Wow I can't believe Uncle Mitchell has been through the same stuff as me_, Alex shook her head for the third time that day. They had spent their whole day together swapping stories and Uncle Mitchell had told her about things that had worked for him so that he could start getting better. Even though it wasn't the blissful day of silence she had originally planned, it was still nice, and almost therapeutic in a way. To be able to get it all off her chest, and blabber and not make sense with someone who had been there; there were just no words to describe what a relief that had been. The way she felt today, dare she say it, she felt like there was hope that she might one day be able to drag herself out of this black hole. Even two days since her family had come home she felt as if she were strong enough to deal with them better, to actually pay attention to their conversation even if she was still unable to interact with them.

She had to capitalise on this newfound ray of hope; before she slumped back into her feeling of worthlessness she should...what exactly? Uncle Mitchell had promised to make weekly appointments for lunch so they could hang out and chat, but he was so busy, Alex doubted that he would be able to keep such a promise. With a sigh Alex fell back against her pillows. _So what else to do?_ Who could she reach out to, what could she do to help herself? Perhaps she should start seeing a counsellor, but she doubted that she would be able to talk to a stranger about her problems if she couldn't talk to her loved ones. Maybe that would make it easier, the counsellor wouldn't know me, wouldn't take my feelings as a personal assault; there would be no worry of them repeating anything, _maybe_. Alex considered it; she would have to act soon before she sunk back into her pit of despair and no longer saw the point in anything. To experience a rare moment of clarity was wonderful, but she couldn't squander such a gift.

Could she see the counsellor without alerting her parents though? She would have to explain the time spent away and then there was the matter of money, it wouldn't be cheap. Alex knew she would have to open up to her parents eventually, but first she had to learn how to discuss what was going on, how to express her opinions again. Right now she felt incapable of holophrasis, the words she had once treasured retreated from her tongue, hugging themselves in dark corners. The way in which she felt was a complex thing and someone one had yet to create the vocabulary to explain the dark blanket pressing down inside her skull, suffocating her mind. If words had failed writers like Sylvia Plath to explain why she felt the way she felt, what hope did Alex have?

Her clarity, her rare flash of light cutting through the suffocating darkness was ebbing away. She was just so lost, and people around her had the ability to reach out a hand, to bring her back to safety, but they had yet to realise she was missing. The person who ate breakfast with them every morning was not her, it was the robot, her autopilot that they were seeing, who made the correct amount of comments as were expected before motoring through her breakfast so she could escape again. Dropping the act though, that was sure to send her parents into full panic mode, dropping the act would mean showing an overwhelming range of raw emotions which would see her mother admitting her to a special hospital. Alex couldn't do that, she wanted to get help, but she wanted it to be on her terms. Admitting her problem to her parents would cause them to jump in and take over, she would simply go back to being treated like a child and plodding along through life. No, to truly recover she had to want to recover, to need to recover; no matter how bad she got, how disillusioned with the process she had to remember just how desperately she was clinging to her sanity, how she needed to get better, for her. Her parents knowing would put pressure on her to get better simply because they expected her to already be better.

Alex crossed the room to her desk and sat down in front of her computer, fingers pausing mid hover over the keyboard. _It's time_, she typed in a search for counsellors in her area, clicking through a few pages before she settled on one, _I will get better!_

**Whatever will happen next? Please leave me some reviews, a happy writer is a creative writer :) **

**Until next week au revoir my dear readers :) **


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Alex watched the conversation intently, chewing her food forcibly as her family talked and laughed with each other. They had not a care in the world, those happy, laughing people; their lives were so simple, so boring, yet somehow fulfilling. Hayley was beaming from ear to ear as she discussed her photography course and how she envisioned her future, Alex glared at her in disgust, she wasn't even sure if she had a future, why should she? Why bother? It was unbearable that Hayley had a bright promising future, the Hayley who spent all her time giggling at boys and flunking classes, and Alex, after everything she had sacrificed, everything she had put into her education, Alex was the one who was flunking life.

Hayley had taken a picture of Alex the other day, catching her unawares as she stared off into space; she hadn't even realised until Hayley had printed the photo and showed it to her. The way she had looked in that photo, how...unrecognisable she was even to herself haunted her still. Hayley had been smiling when she showed Alex, not seeing how...tired the photo showed her to be, had Alex really been like this for so long that it wasn't anything to be alarmed about? In the photo her brow was furrowed as she stared into the distance, there was a pained look in her eyes, and her mouth, the thin lipped line it had become seemed to have forgotten how to smile. This was Alex, this was what she looked like when the mask was wavering.

She had looked at Hayley, tears shimmering in her eyes as she realised that not even her big sister saw how much pain she was in, how much self loathing there was inside. At the same time that she congratulated herself on how well constructed her mask was, she wanted to scream "I'm not okay!" She wanted people to notice, people to care enough to turn their heads and look at the crazy person. There was just so much pain inside, so many tears she had choked back, so many words she hadn't said. Little things hurt so much more than they should, something as silly as a friend taking more than an hour to answer a text was a knife to the heart. Every time someone neglected to ask if she were okay when she was feeling down- which was a lot- was just another reason for her to believe that she was unloved, and that she was unworthy of love.

There was no sense to it, Alex knew that, and perhaps that was what made it worse, Alex was a rational person, she knew that people were busy, she knew that she put up a happy facade, but that didn't stop the thoughts. That didn't stop the deep unhappiness that crept upon her like the mist in a horror movie, leaving her feeling cold, damp, and like something terrible was about to occur. Dread was the new emotion which coloured her existence, stealing over her body so suddenly it left her shaking.

'How was your day, honey?' Alex looked up in shock as her mum addressed her, usually they just ignored her.

'Umm...it was alright,' _No it wasn't, it was horrible, everything is horrible, I just want to curl up in bed and never leave._ 'Just school, learning new things, trying not to smash a book over Sanjay's pompous head, the usual.' _Why can't you see how unhappy I am?!_

'Well what can you expect with his parents,' Claire muttered. She still didn't like Sanjay's parents, in her eyes they were always trying to one up her, rubbing their classiness in her suburban housewife face. _Well I guess we're finished talking about me,_ Alex rolled her eyes. It's not that she particularly wanted to talk about her feelings, it's just it seemed like such a big thing that it was absurd that people could talk about anything else!

Her conversation with Uncle Mitchell the other day had shown her that once she got started talking about her feelings it was hard to stop, they had been bottled up inside and there was so much she needed to say. However the relief that had followed that conversation had faded, and now she was back to being filled with so much self loathing that it started to spill over into loathing for people around her. Alex needed to talk to a professional, she didn't even know who she was anymore, now a angry, twisted soul.

**Yes I know the chapters are short, but I've already explained my reasons, certain chapters will be longer as and when there's more action. Until next week please review, it's like writer in training pay :) **


	8. Chapter 8

**Hey Everyone, sorry that I missed a week posting; I was swamped with last minute uni work, however *cue fanfare I am now finished semester! I can't wait to get back into writing :) **

**Thank you SuperWhoMiz, Guest, and gypsy rosalie for their reviews :) **

Chapter 8

'So how is seeing the counsellor going?' Mitchell delicately picked up his chai latte and took a sip. His pinkie wasn't sticking out like Cam's did, yet it wasn't that much less feminine.

'Yeah, she's nice enough.' Alex shrugged. 'I think it's maybe a little easier to talk to a stranger, but it still feels really weird to talk about all this.'

'It will for a little while, but you need to find the core of the problem and you can only do that by talking.'

'Yeah, I know.' Alex sighed, _but that doesn't make it any easier. _

'Do you think you'll be able to talk to your family about how you're feeling?' Alex raised an eyebrow at this question, giving her uncle a pointed look.

'Did you?'

'Touché.' He nodded knowingly. 'I know the family is a little...'

'Way too involved in each other's lives?' Alex offered

'No...'

'Crazy control freaks?'

'No...'

'Over emotional yet at the same time paradoxically distant?'

'Let's just go with intense.' Mitchell suggested. 'But they're like that because they love us, and as crazy as they are they form a great support network and between Gloria's comforting, Dad's going out there to kill whoever hurt you, your mum's fussing, your dad's hugs and Cam's melodramatic sympathetic sobbing, we've got you covered for any support you might need.' Alex chuckled at the accurate description of her family.

'No doubt Manny would have a literary quote and a warm beverage to go with any feelings as well.' She said dryly. 'Your support is the one I like best though; you let me know you're there for me without looking at me with pity in your eyes.'

'I'm glad to hear you say that, because I never know if I'm helping or not,' Mitchell chuckled. 'I just leave you be so I don't become that awkward hoverer.'

'Like mum, you mean?'

'Yes, like your mum,' Mitchell agreed. 'Look, our family is a crazy bunch, but they care deeply and I think that when you're ready, it will be extremely beneficial for you to talk to them. Until then, though, you can always talk to me.'

'Thank you Uncle Mitchell, that really helps.' Alex smiled, she wasn't sure if the warm feeling spreading through her was inner peace and love, or the effects of the hot cocoa, but either way it felt good, and warm, and safe.

"Remember how it feels to be happy, and cherish those moments so you can work towards feeling that way again one day," her counsellor had told her. Alex wasn't sure if she could call this happiness, perhaps satisfaction was a better word for it. Either way, it was a lot better than how she had been feeling lately, and was a step towards how she wanted to feel in the future, so she drank in the feeling, concentrating on the warmth of each cell in her body.

_I will get better, I will be at peace with myself one day_, it had become sort of a mantra for Alex, reminding herself of what she hoped to achieve; the alternative was just not an option.

**I don't know about you, but I like the fact that Alex has her uncle Mitch there for support :) Please review even if you just leave a few words to let me know people out there are reading :) Have a nice weekend everyone, I shall see you next Friday :) **


	9. Chapter 9

**Hey everyone, welcome to another installment of Alexinthymia. I want to thank all my lovely reviewers, gypsy rosalie, BiggerOil, Guest, and Amy. Special thanks to squirmyphish, your review really made my week. Thank you so much :) **

Chapter 9

_Why do I feel like this? I thought I was meant to be getting better!_ Alex quietly shut the door to her room and leant her warm skin against the cool surface. She was so worked up that once she was finally able to breathe the tears sprang immediately to her eyes. Today had been...Alex sighed as she thought back on it. It hadn't even been a particularly difficult day, it had just been lots of little things that she hadn't been able to cope with and they had built up one upon the other. Even after a month of counselling she was still struggling. She would have good days, and bad days, and days where it felt like a trial just to get out of bed in the morning. No matter how many times it happened, she'd still let herself hope on the good days that this was it, that she was better, that she had clarity. The counsellor had told her many times that it would be a long journey with just as many steps back as forwards, but that didn't stop the jolt of hope she felt when she woke up without the black cloud making her brain fuzzy.

_I just want to be finished with this; I just want it all to be behind me already! _Alex was so fed up with being sick, with being the one who was suffering in silence. She wanted to scream, she wanted to let everyone know that she was dying inside, that she was at war with herself and she had already lost. At the same time though, she didn't want to be the one who was pitied, the broken one, the one who needed to be watched carefully. She wasn't crazy! Even though she felt like her mind was failing her she wasn't ready to let it go completely. She was clinging onto her sanity with aching fingers and she was determined to keep clawing at it until she became strong enough to pull it back.

_How did I even get here? When did I start to feel this way?_ The tears were streaming down her face now as she tried to think back to a time when she suddenly went from being happy to unhappy. There simply wasn't one; life had been wearing her down over time and then one day she just broke. She was split down the middle and her happiness leaked out before she could sticky tape the cracks back up. She was not whole, and that's why she felt like she was going through life in a daze, never caring about anything, never loving, laughing. All the important stuff, all the avenues of joy were lost to her and she had to dig deep within herself to find it again and reclaim it.

_But how? How do I even start to go about it? _It wasn't as simple as thinking happy thoughts; it wasn't a matter of telling herself that she could get through it. If truth be told, Alex wasn't sure how she was going to do it at all. She was on the right path, for that she was thankful, but it was a matter of staying on that path, convincing herself day after day, no matter how hard it got to continue and keep working even when she felt like she couldn't breathe, even when unshed tears rendered her mute. Alex was under no impressions that it was going to be an easy path, but did it have to be _this_ hard?! Did it have to be a daily, almost minutely struggle, to constantly remind herself that she was worthwhile, and that the world needed her to keep on living? It was hard to believe that sometimes, well most times, especially when she felt invisible in the public education system, simply a number in a database, a goody two shoes in class, but never achieving much more than handing things in on time and receiving a mark for it.

_When will I get to prove my worth in life so that I will truly be able to believe that I am important? I sure don't feel important in anything at the moment. _The truth that it probably wouldn't happen until she left all her formal, instituted education behind her was saddening, and overwhelming at times. She didn't even feel like she was learning in school, she was simply memorising points on the checklist of the syllabus, there was no real knowledge gain. _I've just got to get through it, and get that meaningless piece of paper. I've got to believe that once I'm valued as a graduate zombie that I will be able to truly do something of worth, that I will become a name, I will no longer be faceless, nameless, unimportant. It will happen!_

**Ahh Alex, I wish I could tell you that everyone feels this way at times, that life is hard but that there are moments which make it worth it. **

**Thank you all for sticking with this story, it means a lot to me. **

**Wishing you a good weekend, and good mental health :) **

**Please leave a few words if you're enjoying the fic. **

**-Shell**


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